I’m a highly insensitive person, which means that I’m rarely perturbed by aural excitement. I love public noise, the sound of the crowd. I would never want double-glazed windows – and I even like the sound of drills and construction because I enjoy living in a boomtown where lots of people want to be. The only noise I don’t like is that of children screeching in restaurants, pubs and bars, but that’s because I don’t believe they should be there in the first place; I love noisy adults in restaurants, having the time of their lives. Little dogs barking in these places I don’t mind – but not big ones as they look like they’re showing off. I like quiet in libraries – and that’s about it.
There certainly seems to be a lot more complaints about noisy fun that there used to be
I especially like public music, whether blaring in cars or murmuring in elevators, but especially by water; house music by swimming pools, indie music from transistors on the shore, chill-out music in beach bars. When lockdown eased in June 2020, I was mystified as to why the Brighton seafront watering holes were silent; all became clear when government guidance on the longed-for reopening of places of libation instructed that they should ‘prevent entertainment likely to encourage audience behaviours increasing transmission risk… for example, loud background music, communal dancing, group singing or chanting.’ A bar without music? It’s like that sad old song ‘A Pub With No Beer’.
I love heritage pop in shops; sometimes I stand back in queues to let people go in front of me so I can linger longer, listening. During lockdown shops were the last refuges of public music. At the height of the pandemic panic I was standing in a freshly-disinfected mini-mart when ‘West End Girls’ started playing and instantly I was right back there in the sexy-greedy 1980s, running with my gang in Wild West Wonderland, all of us so innocently avaricious. I’m not an emotional person, but when I am moved, it’s generally by pop songs, and to affect me they have to be on the radio, not actively pursued, taking me back to the 1960s when I was a shy provincial child still staggering under the first blow of benediction by black music, all day long lapping up great creamy earfuls of it on wonderful Radio 1. I found music sad in lockdown; perhaps because we first come to love it as adolescents, it seemed like a grotesque echo of being bored teenagers, grounded and longing to get away; pop music represented the freedom we took for granted in the past.
Did Covid make people with miserabilist tendencies more miserable? There certainly seems to be a lot more complaints about noisy fun that there used to be, especially when it comes to pubs. One of my locals – the Paris House in Hove – recently won a long and unnecessary wrangle which started when residents of four nearby properties complained to the council about loud jazz music late at night. You’d think that a pub being noisy in the evenings might not exactly be a revelation; the Paris has been there for as long as I can remember and these neighbours have lived nearby for upwards of 12 years, yet only now they’re complaining that the sound is keeping them from their nightly rendezvous with Morpheus. Which I must say is the first time I’ve ever heard of jazz keeping people awake before.
Luckily, the panel who judged the case saw sense, concluding that ‘the area itself is a busy, vibrant city centre location with many other licensed and retail premises and thus a level of noise is inevitable’ and remarking that ‘there are many representations from residents who live closer to the premises than the applicants who are not disturbed by noise from the premises – including those who live immediately next door.’ Could it be that the people who choose to live closest to a pub are cheerful grown-ups while the complainants are glum and infantilised types who expect people In authority to fix every last one of their own errors of judgement?
The Soho Society aren’t keen on noise either; yes, Soho, whose very name derived from a hunting cry in the 17th century, became a thriving restaurant and music hall sector in the 19th century and has been a busy hub of nightlife ever since, The Soho Society was founded in 1970 and campaigned against the domination of the area by sex shops, gaining conservation status for the district and helping to make it what it is today; a part of London which actually feels like one imagined London would feel when one was a provincial child. If I had to live in London again, I’d live there. But having been wrenched from my beloved Brighton to the fleshpots of W1D, I certainly wouldn’t spend my time involving myself in a preservation society which gets aerated about noise, to the extent that they objected to a restaurant retracting windows in the summertime because of possible chatter from excitable diners.
Though I’m hardly a raving Europhile, I find few things more heartening than a packed city street filled with alfresco diners enjoying the rare sunshine; with the pandemic, many restaurants were saved from bankruptcy by moving operations outside. But even something both so pleasurable and practical as dining under the stars is problematic for the Soho Society, as the Guardian reported: ‘In Soho, the centre of London’s nightlife, residents say alfresco dining and drinking has disrupted access and created intolerable noise. People who have lived there for decades are considering leaving, according to the Soho Society.’ Off they trot, then, preferably to a place which has not been synonymous with noisy fun across three centuries. And now an ice cream van has been threatened with legal action for its ‘too noisy’ chimes, according to the Daily Mail:
John Barton, 33, who runs Harrison’s Ices, based in Lincolnshire, was left stunned when he received a council letter saying they had got complaints about his jingles. East Lindsey District Council said there had been reports of ‘undue noise’ caused by the ‘misuse/overuse of the chimes’ from his bright pink and white van. The letter warned him they had a duty to investigate the complaint and he could face possible prosecution at court under the Control of Pollution Act 1974. The council wrote: ‘It is alleged that when the weather is nice the van is in the area nearly every evening from between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. It has been alleged the chimes are overly loud and are used excessively between the above times.
Understandably, Mr Barton retorted ‘I have come across some weird things in my time and I have to say this is one of the weirdest. The letter basically told us someone had complained that we play our chimes too loud and are claiming we are breaking the law. They’re not too loud, I can barely hear it in my van – it’s 12 second of music! In the middle of the summer season, you don’t expect to get that sort of complaint – someone has got too much time on their hands.’ On Facebook, he exasperatedly elaborated: ‘What has the world come to when you have people complaining about an ice cream at 6 p.m.? If this is you – get a life.’ Lockdown engendered some sad souls who came to fetishise isolation and masking and having stuff brought to them by silent muzzled servants, returned to the pre-birth state of safety like tiny madmen in their padded cells. But we shouldn’t be pandering to these oddities. Why make a silly fuss about a bit of noise on the way to the grave?
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